Brontez Purnell | Press Links

Believer Magazine, “An Interview with Brontez Purnell”, Aug 1, 2019, Jenn Pelly ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ “I wasn’t the kid who was ever gonna be a rapper and be like, I’m the greatest. I’m the kid who ​ ​ wanted a loud guitar, and I wanted to scream my fucking head off.” Link ​

San Francisco Chronicle, “Why writer-dancer Brontez Purnell has toughed it out in the ​ Bay Area for 17 years”, May 1, 2019, Emma Silvers ​ ​ ​ ​ Brontez Purnell’s writing is so wry and gut-baring that reading it makes you feel more reckless by proxy. As a fixture of the Oakland punk scene over the past two decades, Purnell is an artist whose talents refuse to be constrained to one field... Link ​

Skylight Books , “Brontez Purnell Discusses His New Children's Book The ​ Nightlife of Jacuzzi Gaskett”, Feb 3, 2019, Staff ​ ​ ​ ​ Following on the success of Since I Laid My Burden Down, Whiting Award-winning author ​ ​ Brontez Purnell’s first children’s book tells the story of a child charged with caring for his baby brother when his mom is out at night. Link ​

The New York Times Style Magazine, “Black Male Writers for Our Time”, Nov 30, 2018, ​ ​ ​ ​ Ayana Mathis These 32 American men, and their peers, are producing literature that is essential to how we understand our country and its place in the world right now. Link ​

The Paris Review, “Brontez Purnell, Fiction”, Mar 21, 2018, Brontez Purnell ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ Brontez Purnell, whose “explorations of blackness, queerness, maleness, and Southernness take sharp, confident turns between raunch and rhapsody,” Link ​

MEL Magazine, “The Legendary Queer Punk Rocker and Hysterical Author Whose Book You Need to Read”, Oct 17, 2017, Tierney Finster ​ ​ “I caught up with Purnell… to talk about the closeted men he used to go to church with in Alabama; coming out to his mom as punk; and the ever-diminishing economic returns of trimming weed.” Link ​

GRANTA, “Brontez Purnell Is Everything”, July 5, 2017, Michelle Tea ​ ​ Brontez writes with Morrissey-like woe about the perils of love and sex and dating but he does it with the fearless, fucked-up humor of someone dancing on the razor wire of faggotry and ​ Blackness and HIV+ status and being broke and being truly punk, for life. Link ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​

MTV News, “The Truth at the Heart of Brontez Purnell’s Since I Laid My Burden Down”, ​ ​ June 20, 2017, Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib ​ Purnell’s own lived experience as someone who is deeply immersed in punk, and who is also black, and also queer, isn’t the book's subject. Yet it feels like this lived experience informs the narrative in a way that is refreshing – in how the book reckons with fear, with isolation, with love and distance. Link ​

Art In America, “Naked Soap Operas: An Interview with Brontez Purnell”, June 12, 2017, ​ ​ Bradford Nordeen For the Brontez Purnell Dance Company’s New York debut, no curtain or flooring was spared in the gushing spew of baby powder, Jell-O, or popcorn that was Chronic: A Dance About ​ Marijuana. Although audible gasps emerged from the back of the house as the production team ​ quickly came to terms with the long night of clean up that lay ahead, a more estimable fire sparked in the eyes of NYLA founder Bill T. Jones, as I heard him say feverishly to the festival’s organizers, “Oh, he’s got it.” Link ​

Feminist Press, “Since I Laid My Burden Down: An uninhibited exploration of growing up ​ gay in 1980s Alabama”, June 2017, Staff ​ ​ ​ A raw, funny, and uninhibited stumble down memory lane, Brontez Purnell’s debut novel explores how one man’s early sexual and artistic escapades grow into a life. Link ​

The Creative Independent, “Brontez Purnell on doing as much as possible”, Jan 16, 2017, ​ ​ ​ ​ Brandon Stosuy “I move through a lot of disciplines fairly well, and they all have a common core of me. When I do a dance piece my fingerprint and my signature are definitely on it… you definitely know I did that shit! When I write a rock and roll song, you know I did that shit.” Link ​

LAMBDA Literary, “Brontez Purnell: Love, Compassion, and Rock & Roll”, Jan 2, 2012, ​ ​ Frank J. Miles Purnell is not – he is Brontez. Through all of his evolving art, he is in the world as himself. All of his art is unflinching and candid about the unspoken known: “Did he just say that?” – yes, he did, and he meant it, unselfconsciously, and he said it with a sweet touch and a relaxed empathy. Link ​